Butter is suddenly back in fashion, but the choice can be baffling. We round
up the best butter for your buck

Butter is now back in the good books after years consigned to the naughty step. Recent reports show sales of butter – long ostracised for its links to heart disease, high cholesterol and obesity – are booming, while our taste for margarine is melting away.

A glance in the chiller cabinets of supermarkets and artisan dairies proves the point: there’s an abundant – some would say baffling – choice. English butters vie with packs from Italy, Ireland and Wales, while value-range versions compete with pricey butters made with cow, goat and buffalo milk, and even whey. For those who have long believed that butter makes everything better, the range is wonderful. But how do you choose?

In Britain, most butter is made from ''sweet’’ or pasteurised cream, to which salt and milk powder is sometimes added. French and Italian butters, on the other hand, are often made with cream containing bacterial culture, which gives them a fuller, riper flavour.

Sometimes butter is slowly churned in batches (a method favoured by small producers), sometimes it is churned continuously in bulk.

Value-range butters are often stored in bulk before being cut into individual packs, while other mass-produced butters are packed fresh from the churn.

So how do consumers distinguish between them when the information on the packet is minimal? A price tag of £4 might make sense for a block of Italian buffalo-milk butter, but what is the difference between British butters priced £1–£3?

The dairy trade body Dairy UK insists there is plenty of information on packaging to help consumers. Moreover, it says 95 per cent of British butter carries the Red Tractor mark, which guarantees “robust production standards from farm to fork”. Lee-Anna Rennie, dairy coordinator at The School of Artisan Food, disagrees, arguing that consumers need more information.

“Really good butter comes from animals that are pasture-fed,” she says. “It contains higher levels of CLA [conjugated linoleic acid], which not only lends it a richer flavour, but there’s lots of evidence that this butter is better for you.

“French and Italian butter comes from herds that roam free and graze, and the cream is left to acidify slightly before it’s churned.

“But most butter you find in Britain isn’t made that way, and there’s no way of knowing how it’s produced by reading the packaging. It would be great if butter carried more information about how herds are fed and whether the cream has come from a single producer. They’re all factors that affect the taste and quality.”

Rennie suggests opting for a less expensive unsalted butter for use in cooking and a quality salted butter to slather on bread and toast. “But always buy British and choose a small family-produced butter if possible,” she says.

Abernethy Butter, owned by Allison and Will Abernethy, is one such small producer. All their butter is hand-churned and made with cream from grass-fed herds that graze not far from their farm in Northern Ireland. The flavour and creaminess is spectacular, and they now sell to Michelin-starred restaurants around Britain – the Abernethys can barely churn it fast enough to meet demand.

“People say our butter has a rich, creamy taste, and that’s because we use good-quality cream,” Allison says. “Churning and washing the butter to remove as much of the buttermilk as possible is also important. A lot of big dairies that mass-produce butter don’t churn it properly, and some don’t churn it at all.”

You can, of course, make your own butter. It’s very simple and children love watching the magical transformation of cream into a delicious spread.

Pour 500ml of good-quality double cream into a bowl. You can beat it straight away or, to make cultured butter, cover and let the cream sit at room temperature for several hours. Alternatively, stir in two or three tablespoons of live natural yogurt, cover with a clean cloth and leave somewhere warm for 18–24 hours until thick.

Beat the cream with an electric beater for a few minutes until it separates into butterfat and buttermilk. Pour the liquids and solids into a muslin-lined sieve set over a bowl. Gather the ends of the muslin together, squeeze out any remaining liquid, then place the butter in a bowl of cool water.

Squeeze and knead the butter using spatulas or large spoons – your hands will melt the butter. Drain off the liquid, cover the butter with fresh water and squeeze again. Repeat the process until the water is clear. Pat the butter dry and knead in a pinch or two of salt if you like. Shape into a log and wrap in greaseproof paper. The butter will last several weeks in the fridge.